Different Trains is made up of three movements, which bear the following titles:

I: America – Before the War

II: Europe – During the War

III: After the War

In each part, melodies are introduced, usually by a single instrument (viola for women and cello for men), a recording of the spoken phrase from which the melody derives is played. The melody is then developed for a while, with the instruments playing along with the recording of the phrase or part of the phrase. The music for the strings makes extensive use of paradiddle rhythms, with alternating pitches instead of alternating drum sticking. In addition to speech, the piece includes recordings of train sounds, as well as of sirens and warning bells, and prerecorded multiple lines by the string quartet, thus effectively creating four quartets out of one, reflective of three Counterpoint pieces that preceded it: Vermont Counterpoint for multiple multitracked flutes, New York Counterpoint for multiple multitracked clarinets, and Electric Counterpoint for multiple multitracked electric guitars.

The recorded version on this album lasts for approximately 27 minutes.

As with other pieces by Reich, Electric Counterpoint has influenced many modern artists, such as the Orb, who sampled the third movement of the Pat Metheny recording as one of the hooks of "Little Fluffy Clouds," and RJD2, who sampled the piece's opening for his song "The Proxy" from his first release, Deadringer. In 2008 Joby Burgess' Powerplant arranged the work for Xylosynth, taking influence from Metheny and the Orb. Röyksopp released two remixes of the third movement in 2010 for free, one which follows Reich's original closely and another reinterpretation titled "Milde Salve". Since 2012, Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood has performed the piece at several festivals and at concerts featuring the London Contemporary Orchestra; he recorded the piece for a Nonesuch album of Reich works titled Radio Rewrite released that same year, the title piece of which was inspired by two Radiohead songs.

The third movement was included in the Edexcel GCSE Anthology of Music, in the second area of study, "Music in the 20th Century". It was included in the video game Civilization V as one of the "great works of music" and was performed by during the Bluecoats Drum and Bugle Corps 2015 production "Kinetic Noise".

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1990 Grammy Award – Best Contemporary Composition (awarded to composer Steve Reich for Different Trains)

New Music America Best New Music Award

From Steve Reich’s liner notes: “The concept for the piece came from my childhood. When I was one year old, my parents separated. My mother moved to Los Angeles and my father stayed in New York. Since they arranged divided custody, I traveled back and forth by train frequently between New York and Los Angeles from 1939 to 1942 accompanied by my governess. While the trips were exciting and romantic at the time, I now look back and think that, if I had been in Europe during this period, as a Jew I would have had to ride very different trains. With this in mind I wanted to make a piece that would accurately reflect the whole situation.”

Kronos’ David Harrington on Different Trains: “Because Different Trains is performed in concert by a live quartet with three additional quartets on tape, we had to record Different Trains before we could ever play it in performance. Every other piece that we had recorded up until then we had performed and practiced for a long time. Different Trains was different. And everything about Different Trains—its boldness, its subject matter, its sound requirements—has pushed Kronos and our music into many new directions. We thank Steve for writing this masterpiece for Kronos, which has altered our work forever and has helped to reinvigorate our entire musical form. To my ears, Different Trains sounds as fresh, disturbing, and personal as it did when it was written.”

Nonesuch: "Nonesuch Records' 1989 recording of Steve Reich's Different Trains, the Grammy Award winner for Best Contemporary Composition that year, and Electric Counterpoint has returned on vinyl for the first time in more than twenty-five years. The album features the first recordings of the two pieces, performed by Kronos Quartet and Pat Metheny, respectively. The vinyl edition—mastered by Robert C. Ludwig at Gateway Mastering in Portland, Maine, with lacquers cut by Bernie Grundman, and pressed on 140-gram vinyl at Record Industry in the Netherlands—is out today, the 30th anniversary of Kronos Quartet's world premiere performance of Different Trains at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. To pick up a copy of Different Trains / Electric Counterpoint on vinyl, stop by your local record shop or visit the Nonesuch Store now. On Different Trains, which combines string quartet with taped speech, Reich evokes his American childhood during World War II while also addressing the Holocaust. The New York Times declared it "a work of such originality that 'breakthrough' seems the only possible description."

Earlier this year, Pitchfork placed Different Trains / Electric Counterpoint at No. 93 on its list of the 200 Best Albums of the 1980s. It's a "late-career masterpiece" for the composer, wrote Pitchfork's Jazz Monroe of Different Trains. "The piece found a new tenor for Reich—clear-eyed, anguished, searching—that suited him. He wasn’t a minimalist upstart anymore; he was a moral conscience, albeit as earthbound and lost as the rest of us."

Electric Counterpoint was written for Pat Metheny, who gave the world premiere performance of the piece at Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival in November 1987. The guitarist performs against multiple pre-recorded tape of himself—and "splendidly," said the New York Times. The piece is "filled with jazz and funk-inflected rhythms, reveling in the spirit of American vernacular culture ... [and] finds Mr. Reich capitalizing on his strengths. Here, at the point furthest removed from convention, is where his creative juices flow most freely.""

SELECT CREDITS

MUSICIANS

Kronos Quartet (1-3):

David Harrington, violin

John Sherba, violin

Hank Dutt, viola

Joan Jeanrenaud, cello

Pat Metheny, electric guitar (4-6)

 

PRODUCTION CREDITS

Produced by Judith Sherman

Tracks 1-3 recorded August 31-September 9, 1988 at Russian Hill Recording, San Francisco

Engineer: Les Brockman

Assistant engineer: Michael Ahearn

Mixing engineer: Rob Eaton

Assistant mixing engineer: Ben Fowler

Tracks 4-6 recorded September 26-October 1, 1987, at Power Station, New York City

Engineer: Rob Eaton

Assistant engineer: Gary Solomon

Production assistant: David Oakes

Production coordinator: Jennifer Keats

Mastering: Robert C. Ludwig

Art direction and design: Frank Olinsky

Cover photography: Karl Steinbrenner

Executive Producer: Robert Hurwitz